GENEVA, 22 January 2008 — The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Georgetown University, yesterday made public a report on the state of dialogue between Islam and the West.
The report is a systematic and thorough overview of how Muslim and Western societies perceive and relate to each other on the political, social, economic and cultural levels.
It is the result of in-depth research carried out by leading academics and experts. It indicates that the majority of the world’s population believes that violent conflict between the West and the Muslim world can be avoided, but they also share a great deal of pessimism about the state of the relationship.
Among both Muslim majority and non-Muslim majority nations, the proportion who say they think the “other side” is committed to better relations rarely rises above 30 percent. Notwithstanding the prevalent sense of skepticism, many residents in nations around the world say that better interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is important to them.
“The World Economic Forum believes that, like all other global challenges, it will take the collaborative effort of all stakeholders from government, business, religion, media, academia and civil society to pre-empt any crisis, create alliances and find solutions,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.
“Over the course of 2008, the Community of Islam and the West Dialogue will invite leaders from various walks of life to engage in a concerted dialogue and debate of the most important issues, in particular the area of citizenship and integration,” he said.
The report features a Gallup Muslim-West Dialogue Index, which is a ranking of countries based on citizens’ degrees of optimism about the state of relations between the West and the Muslim world. The report presents an analysis of the portrayal of Islam and the West in newspapers and television across 24 countries by Media Tenor, an international content analysis organization, as well as a survey by Georgetown University of international, national and local efforts to improve Muslim-Western relations.
An important finding of the report is the emergence of citizenship and integration as the second most powerful shaper of the state of dialogue after international politics.
Growing Muslim minorities committed to active and full citizenship, particularly in Europe, are increasingly finding a voice in the public sphere. Governments committed to ideals of equality and recognition, but eager to maintain majority support and national cohesion, are seeking to engage Muslim groups in structured dialogue and are experiencing mixed results.
According to a Gallup poll of 1,000 people in 21 countries, published with the report, two-thirds of people in Muslim countries said Muslims respected the West. Almost the same number felt the West did not respect them. Many Western respondents said they did not believe either side respected the other.
Incidents such as the cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in European newspapers deepened distrust, with Muslims seeing them as an assault on their religion and Westerners alarmed by Muslim protests which they saw as a threat to free speech.
But the report found that majorities in all countries surveyed do not believe military conflict is inevitable, and it said the levels of mistrust varied from country to country. Iranians, whose government is locked in a standoff with the West over its nuclear program, felt less respected by the West than Turks, who are seeking European Union membership.
In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, only a minority believes the West and Muslim world are in conflict. That view may be the result of more positive Muslim perceptions of countries, such as France and Germany, seen in a better light than the United States, the report said.
It found that Europeans, worried by immigration and a perceived Muslim threat to their culture, are alarmed at the prospect of greater interaction with the Islamic world. By contrast, a majority of people in the United States, Israel and the Muslim world felt more interaction would help.
“European populations surveyed are much more likely to believe that greater interaction between the Muslim and Western worlds is a threat than a benefit,” the report said. “Although some might expect the United States, Israel and the Middle East to be more likely than Europe to be threatened by the ‘other,’ the opposite is the case,” the report said.
“As an annual global reference on the state of the West and Islam dialogue, the report will elevate the visibility of dialogue activities around the world and strengthen efforts to advance greater understanding and cooperation at a critical juncture in history,” said Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia, the report’s lead author.
